Microsoft Corp. announced Thursday that will build a $550 million data center in San Antonio to house its growing online services.

The 400,000-square-foot facility will be the software giant’s first major data center in Texas.

The data center will house tens of thousands of computers for Internet services like Microsoft’s Windows Live offerings, which include everything from instant messaging to e-mail, said Mike Manos, Microsoft senior director of data centers.

To entice Microsoft, which will eventually employ about 75 people at the site, the city approved a tax abatement package that will run over the next 10 years.

Mayor Phil Hardberger said the incentive will help turn vacant land within the city into a revenue-producer, bringing more tax dollars to the city and the schools. The data center will also use electricity from the municipal power company, generating roughly $1.4 million extra annually for San Antonio.

Once Microsoft closes on the 40-acre property, construction will take 1 1/2 to 2 years, Manos said.

City officials, appearing at a news conference with Manos, were jubilant at the arrival of one of the nation’s largest companies.

More details on the property tax abatement here, but it’s par for the course these days. The last big Microsoft data center was in Quincy, Washington – who’s next?

One Response to “Microsoft to build mega data center in San Antonio”

[...] Microsoft also has built and/or is building datacenter facilities in San Antonio, Dublin, Santa Clara and Quincy, Wash. (LiveSide.Net managed to get some nice shots recently of the Quincy compound — from outside the fence.) [...]